INFO
| Name | Starch Work by Experts: |
| Also known as | Starch Work by Experts: Chinese Laundries in Aotearoa New Zealand |
| Writer(s) | Joanna Boileau |
| Publisher | Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust |
| Type of Text | Non-fiction |
| Artform | Literature |
ABOUT
Researched and written by Dr Joanna Boileau, a specialist in the history of Chinese people in New Zealand and Australia, Starch Work by Experts is a 386-page book about the Chinese hand laundries that operated in Aotearoa from the 1880s to the 1950s. Although the book is not a comprehensive account of all Chinese laundries in New Zealand, Boileau describes it as a fair and representative sample, encompassing businesses from small towns to large cities.
The book begins with background on Chinese settlement in New Zealand and how Chinese men came to establish laundries: an occupation requiring little capital and equipment, and one that faced little competition. Many laundrymen in New Zealand came from the Seyip counties of Guangdong in Southern China. Following the peak of goldmining work in the 1970s, market gardening and laundry work became popular and saw their heyday in the 1920s.
Chinese laundrymen captured a niche market that specialised in men’s detachable starched collars and shirts, which required time-consuming individual treatment and finishing, enabling them to compete with mechanised European steam laundries. The rise of consumer goods, such as washing machines and irons, from the 1940s, along with changes in fashion, led to a decline in the popularity of Chinese hand laundries.
The introduction to the book details the processes, skills and equipment required for an efficient operation. It also recounts the challenges and setbacks, such as fires, failed ventures and bankruptcy, and the prevailing institutional racism and prejudice towards Chinese people. For example, Chinese laundries were targeted by the Factories Amendment Act 1910 in an attempt to limit competition against Europeans in the laundry trade. The book explains the social and economic changes and major world events that impacted the rise and fall of Chinese laundries in New Zealand, including changing standards of hygiene and fashion, the Great Depression, civil war in China, and the 1937 Japanese invasion of China.
The chapters that follow are organised by region, including transcribed oral histories from those areas, including: Dunedin, Otago-Southland, West Coast, Christchurch, Canterbury, Nelson-Malborough, Wellington, Wairarapa, Manawatū-Whanganui, Taranaki, Gisborne-Hawkes Bay, Auckland, Waikato, Coromandel-Bay of Plenty, and Northland. Each chapter starts with geographical and historical information related to that region. The stories are illustrated with photographs from laundry families and of the current locations of where laundries used to be.
Boileau became interested in Chinese history while working for the local historical society in northern New South Wales, where she wrote Families of Fortune (2009), a book about Chinese people in the local area. In New Zealand, she completed her thesis on Chinese market gardening in Australia and New Zealand and, in 2014, was contacted and commissioned by the Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust to research and write a book on Chinese laundries.
Laundry families were contacted by Boileau with a questionnaire and interview request. The oral histories served as the primary source for the book and were verified for factual accuracy where possible. As Boileau visited libraries, museums and historical societies, and drew on contemporary newspapers, business directories and immigration and government records, she shared any new information uncovered in the research with the families.
Boileau said in the process she discovered the work “was quite different from this stereotype of Chinese laundries as this very menial, low-status occupation. It was actually a very specialised job.” Because of the specialised process of starching, involving individual treatment, she named the book Starch Work by Experts.
Tony Thackery from Manawatu Chinese Association commended the detail and colour that was captured in the work. He said:
Taking nearly five years to complete, the book launched in November 2019. By then, some of the older interviewees had passed away. The Chair of the Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust at the time, Kai Luey, said that because many early Chinese settlers and their descendants have died, the book addressed “an urgent need to record their stories and memories for the benefit of future generations. Laundry work was one of the major occupations early Chinese settlers took up in New Zealand.”
